


Pandora's Box

by misura



Category: Sinbad (TV)
Genre: F/F, Oblivious, Unresolved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 06:41:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20652851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: Rina likes to try on Nala's jewelry. By preference without Nala there to see her.





	Pandora's Box

Nala never bothered hiding her jewelry box - and it was a _box_, a great, big thing, stuffed to the brim with enough pieces to make Rina wonder, every now and then, whether Nala would even notice if one or two went missing.

Of course, now that they were all friends, Rina wouldn't actually take them. She might be a thief, but she did not steal from her friends.

_Borrowing_ on the other hand - well, nothing wrong with only _borrowing_, was there? And Rina didn't even carry them anywhere, just tried them on for a bit, see how they looked.

Some of them felt way too heavy. Valuable and expensive, sure, only what was the point in being rich if it only meant wearing jewelry that made you feel like you'd hung a couple of weights around your neck? If Rina ever got rich, she wanted to wear beautiful things that wouldn't weigh her down.

She'd make Anwar her personal doctor and buy him all the books he wanted, and she supposed she might make Gunnar and Sinbad her bodyguards or something. Cook would get all the spices he wanted, and Nala ... Nala _was_ rich, so Rina supposed she wouldn't need Rina to make or get her anything.

Rina sighed, selecting another piece. She didn't think she'd ever seen Nala wear it, which seemed a pity. Why carry around a box full of jewelry and then not show them off?

"That one looks good on you."

Rina winced, wondering if she'd really gotten so sloppy that she'd let someone sneak up on her. In her other life, that could have cost her a hand, if not her life. "Doesn't it? I thought so, too."

Nala walked up behind her and Rina felt her adjust the clasp, moving the necklace slightly. "There. Much better."

Rina didn't see or feel any difference, but if Nala wasn't going to get prissy about Rina helping herself to Nala's jewelry, Rina supposed she could put up with Nala's superior attitude for a bit.

"Pretty," Nala murmured, her hands still on Rina's shoulders.

"So how come I've never seen you wear this one?"

She felt Nala startle, as if the question surprised her. "It looks better on a person with pale skin," Nala said at last. "Like you have."

"It wasn't very smart to buy it, then, was it?" Rina snorted. Rich people! "Not as if your skin's going to turn any less dark all of a sudden." Not even money would get you _that_, though Rina's heard a story of some woman who bathed in fresh milk every day, to keep her skin young and supple.

"I didn't buy it for me," Nala said, and oh yeah, there was the prissy Nala they all knew and loved.

"Who, then?" Rina fingered the stones. They looked real, and she suspected Nala would never lower herself to buying fakes, which meant there were about six month's living expenses hanging around her neck. It'd be a nice nest egg to have, once they all went their own ways again.

Nala sighed. "Does that really matter? It does not belong to you."

"Know what I think? I think you did buy it for you. You just don't want to admit you spent all that money on a necklace you're not even going to wear." Rina nodded to herself. "I bet that's what really happened."

"Are you calling me a liar?" Nala asked.

Rina turned to look at her, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'm right, aren't I?"

"No," Nala said. "You are wrong." The words _'as always'_ were heavily implied.

Rina scowled. They all shared the same duties, lived the same life, at the same food aboard the Providence, and yet here Nala was, acting all high and mighty. "Am I? Who'd you buy it for, then? Gunnar?" His skin tended to be more red than pale.

"It is not a necklace meant to be worn by a man," Nala said. "As you might know, if you knew anything about jewelry at all."

"I know enough to steal it and sell it for a fair price. That's good enough for me."

Nala stiffened. "Put it back. Now."

"Fine." Rina fumbled with the clasp, hating how Nala's expression made her feel like a child, caught doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing. "Not like I was going to steal the stupid thing." She tossed it back into the box. "There. Happy?"

"Do not let me find you getting into my things again," Nala said.

Rina chuckled. "All right. I'll be more careful next time. Now are you happy?"

Nala frowned. She didn't look much like the Nala who'd come and admired the way one of her necklaces had looked around Rina's neck anymore. _That_ Nala, Rina felt she might have liked, even become friends with. This Nala, on the other hand - _it would serve her right if I _did_ steal her stuff one day,_ Rina thought.

"I'll take that as a 'yes', shall I?"

"Rina." Nala grabbed her wrist as Rina tried to slip past her, back to the deck, where no doubt Cook would have more to tell her about ropes and knots and all sorts of things a thief didn't need to know. (Well. Knowing how to undo a knot when someone'd tied you up might be useful, Rina supposed.)

"What? Do you want to search my pockets now? My bedding, perhaps?" Rina was beginning to feel annoyed.

Nala shook her head, grabbing the necklace from the box with one hand while the other kept Rina where she was. In a market square or a crowd, Rina might have used the opportunity to break Nala's hold and get away, but they were on a _ship_. Where was she going to run? "Take it."

"Take it?" Rina repeated. "What do you mean, take it? I'm not a thief! I mean, I am a thief," she amended, "but I don't steal from my friends. Or people I travel with."

Nala grimaced, pressing the necklace in Rina's hands. "What about my words was unclear?"

Rich people really were all crazy. Still, Rina'd been raised better than to look a gift fortune in the mouth. Except, "It's not cursed, is it?"

Nala muttered something under her breath and then said, "No."

"All right." Rina stuffed the necklace into one of her pockets. "Thanks." It seemed polite to say that much, at least, even if she still had no idea what had just happened.

"You're welcome," Nala said, sounding not in the least like she meant it.

Then again, if she had, that would have made the whole thing even more weird than it already had been. Rina decided she'd had enough weirdness for one day: much better to get scoffed at by Cook for fumbling her knots. Again.


End file.
